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"In anticipation that both phases of 'Downfall' might have to be employed, the Pentagon would order so many Purple Heart medals - for the wounded-in-action - that the stocks outlasted the wars in Korea, Viet Nam, and American military involvements since. Nothing could demonstrate more dramatically what the anticipated costs of invading Japan appeared to be at the time for military planners."
For all its death and destruction, World War Two represents the dawn of global-centric society. Two very important decisions were reached as a result of this war that serve as the foundation for today’s still emerging global economy and international spirit. The first was the decision to create a world body to address regional grievances and serve as a platform for global cooperation, the United Nations.
The second was perhaps the more profound decision. It led to a “Cold War” that brought our species to the brink of self-destruction. Strangely enough, it likewise made the concept of Total War, so prevalent from 1864 to 1945, obsolete and war in general became so prohibitively expensive that, despite numerous tragic regional conflicts, an unprecedented era of world peace emerged. It was the first truly global decision at the birth of global-centric consciousness, the decision to drop the atomic bombs on Japan.
As with so many any things in history, it all started with several comparatively minor and seemingly disassociated events. The partitioning of Poland by Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union led to some 10,000 Polish officers being secretly massacred deep within Russia. At this same time, President Roosevelt authorized heavy research into the development of an atomic weapon. International law was thrown out the window as the Battle of Britain began, setting in motion the routine bombing of civilians as an effective means to strike at the enemy’s economic and cultural infrastructure. Roosevelt and Churchill, in an effort to strengthen their alliance and support for the struggle of the Soviets against Hitler, declared at Casablanca that nothing short of the “unconditional surrender” of Germany and Japan would be acceptable. Little thought was given at the time what such a rigid precedent would mean to Japanese culture, it was simply meant as a gesture of support among the Allies.
The Polish government in exile learned of the massacre of its officers by the Soviets and publicly condemned the act. This gave Stalin all the excuse he needed to establish a puppet government in Poland once his massive army retook the territory. By now the atomic bomb project had become one of the largest bureaucratic forces in human history, driving to create a useable weapon of war with a technology never attempted. The Japanese bushido code of warriorship and tight military control of all aspects of its society suddenly found itself culturally trapped in a Total War of its own making with no basis for accepting surrender. The closer the Americans came to the mainland, the more tenacious and deadly the Japanese became. Meanwhile, in Europe, the Soviet’s used their military clout to further Lenin’s original intentions of perpetuating Communist Society over the whole of the continent.
All these factors, some more subtle than others, combined with other realities faced by President Truman when he inherited the whole situation and are equally responsible for the conditions that made the dropping of the atomic bombs a justifiable action. As I have shown, some highly respected critics have seriously challenged the merits of that decision through the years, but their position is untenable for a variety of reasons.
There was no possibility of the peace party within Japan having any impact on the conclusion of the war. There was no chance to wait for the blockade and strategic bombing of Japan to bring about surrender. The Soviets would have taken too much land in the Far East. There is no evidence that the bombing raids significantly impacted Japan’s ability to wage war. Finally, there is no evidence (other than post-war conjecture on both sides) that the Soviet intervention would have led to a quick decision to surrender by Emperor Hirohito. To the contrary, all the evidence available prior to the actual surrender indicates that the Emperor intervened only AFTER news of Nagasaki was presented to him. Only at that point did he INSIST upon accepting unconditional surrender.
Perhaps the best overall analysis on the use of the atomic bombs can be found in George Feifer’s insightful book “Tennozan.” While he points out that the decision to drop the bombs “was made with insufficient care and enlightenment,” he is quick to support their deployment on several grounds.
Just as President Truman proclaimed after their use, Feifer points out that Operation Ketsu-Go was a powerful defensive preparation and would have caused heavy American and Japanese casualties alike. “The Japanese war machine was finished by Allied standards," he writes, "but four million men remained under arms. Although they could not possibly achieve victory, they had ample means for inflicting terrible punishment on the invaders while saving honor by fighting to the end.” (page 571) Casualty estimates for Americans were the highest of any operation in the Pacific War. The Japanese were correct in their strategy to the extent that no American had the stomach for paying such a price.
Feifer makes it clear that, based upon experience at Guam and Okinawa, upwards of 20 million Japanese would have likely died during military operations against the home islands. By contrast, the atomic bombs resulted in about 200,000 Japanese deaths. But beyond that “any estimate of lives saved by the atomic bombs must include hundreds of thousands of combatants and civilians in China, Manchuria and other territories still fought for and occupied, often viciously, by Japan.” (page 573)
Furthermore, hundreds of thousands of Allied prisoners were spared death because the bombs ended the war. “After the fall of Okinawa, Field Marshall Count Hisaichi Terauchi issued an order directing his prison camp officers to kill all their captives the moment the enemy invaded his southeast Asia theater. That would have been when those 200,000 British landed to retake Singapore, less than three weeks after the Japanese surrender. There was a real chance that Terauchi’s order would have been carried out, in which case up to 400,000 people would have been massacred.” (page 573) This British operation, code named Zipper, was in its final preparations when the bombs fell on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
The Japanese people were fully prepared to face starvation and every sort of military assault in order to defend their honor and their culture against invaders. “’Even if the Japanese people are weary of the war,’ Toyoda insisted, ‘we must fight to the last man.’ Millions of Japanese, including civilians, still could not conceive of any end to the war other than victory or death. Just before the Emperor’s speech telling his people to accept defeat, Tokyo shopkeepers sharpened knives, expecting an order for the entire nation to commit suicide. None of this was bombast or vacillation, as with the intimidated peace faction. None of it changed until the atomic bomb – and only barely after both bombs had done their work.” (page 578)
Critics of the bombs like to argue of Japan’s impending defeat, but they universally fail to realize that very few Japanese considered themselves defeated and no one with any genuine political power did. What’s more, the much praised work of strategic bombing upon Japan’s war-making abilities had virtually nothing to do with the reality of Ketsu-Go, just as isolation from supplies had little to do with the deadliness of taking Okinawa. “The supplies in Japan’s armory were adequate for more years of suicidal delaying actions on this hill and that escarpment. Superior American firepower would have provoked more murderous savagery on both sides, and deeper cultural devastation of Japan. Calls would have been made for ever greater sacrifice, although they already specified that every life must be given for the country. That is why many Japanese civilians as well as American infantrymen cheered the bomb.” (page 579)
There is no question that the blockade and strategic bombing operations against Japan were effective. However, there is no evidence that, based upon information available to decision makers in the summer of 1945, these efforts alone would bring about Japan’s surrender. Certainly not in the timely fashion required by the Soviets entry into the war. General Marshall specifically stated that such actions were insufficient as he continued preparations for Operation Olympic. He even considered the use of multiple atomic bombs to assist in the American landings.
There were some voices of qualified decent, like Admirals King and Leahy. But, Feifer points out these were far and away the exceptions in 1945. “Most of those with actual experience of Japanese behavior during the war,” he writes, “as opposed to those convinced of how Japan was supposed to behave – were certain that blockade and bombing could not work. The rule seemed to be that complaints about the atomic bomb’s inhumanity increased in proportion to the critics' distance from the hell to which the weapon had put an end. ‘In general, the principle is, the farther from the scene of horror, the easier to talk,’ as Paul Fussell put it concisely. The less one knew about the Pacific War in general and such battles as Okinawa in particular, the greater one’s doubts and the more likely one’s disapproval.” (page 581)
As I have already mentioned, the bombs took some of the aggressive wind out of the sails of the Soviets in Europe and ended the war before they could gather all the territory they wanted in Asia. As for the Japanese, in all honesty no one can point to any single event that more impacted the will of the Emperor than the deployment of atomic bombs against his people.
As for her surrender, Feifer states: “…only the atomic bombs could have achieved it without the years of ‘decisive battle’ or mass starvation. For the unbearable was (barely) accepted only when the Emperor spoke up, and that moment came only after Nagasaki. The terrifying atomic devastation prompted his startling intervention, then tipped the balance among military commanders in favor of obedience.” (page 583)
The simple fact of the matter is that, in war, often times the most intense act of violence is the most compassionate, especially when you are dealing with a warrior culture like that of Japan in 1945. That is an irony of the human spirit and of history.
It is also a fact of history that no weapon type has ever been developed that hasn’t been used in actual combat. The critics of Truman’s decision to drop the bombs on Japan are great speculators. They will argue that the bomb should have been used in a demonstration or that Japan should have been warned of which city it was to be dropped upon prior to its deployment. They want you to believe the war would have ended favorably even without the use of the bomb (while the Soviets gobbled up vast chucks of Asia). So, allow me to close with a bit of speculation of my own.
What if the tragedy of Hiroshima and Nagasaki had never happened?
First, consider the propensity throughout history in actual combat. That a weapon’s development is not complete until it is displayed as a force in battle. Now consider the Berlin airlift or the Cuban missile crisis or any of a number of other political crises that emerged during the birth pains of our global society. Consider that Presidential candidate Barry Goldwater recommended in 1964 that atomic bombs be used in the growing conflict in Vietnam.
It is not farfetched speculation to say that, in the absence of the horrific experience at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, somewhere along the way in the Cold War nuclear weapons would have been more likely to be used. These weapons would have had far more destructive effects and, given the political climate of the times, could have led to the all-out nuclear war that everyone feared and for which all prepared.
But, humanity knew from actual experience what the consequences were for such actions. There were tangible deaths and suffering to point toward, there was more than just the theory of what MIGHT happen. By measuring later nuclear devices as so many times more powerful “than the bomb dropped on Hiroshima” (a common expression worldwide), this terrible weapon had a tangible reality. The importance of that reality is incalculable, in my opinion, in avoiding the use of such weapons during the 1950’s and 1960’s.
Today we still face the potential for a nuclear holocaust as more nations develop these weapons even as the United States and the former Soviet Union dismantle large chucks of their arsenals. But, if we fear the use of these weapons it is not because of some philosophical nobility or textbook analysis of the possibility of some nuclear winter. It is, rather, because in August of 1945 200,000 human beings physically died as a result of their use.
Perhaps more than the tens of millions that died as a result of World War Two, those 200,000 have had greater value in the post-war years of guaranteeing that a Third World War is unthinkable. The ghosts of Hiroshima and Nagasaki speak to us today because of their sacrifice as perhaps no other wartime deaths in all of human history. And while we continue to strive toward a peaceful world of global cooperation, those deaths hover in the minds of those with the power to start and end wars. It is the supreme irony of history that without them atomic violence would be only imaginable while it takes the physical reality of their deaths to make such future violence unimaginable.
Our global society began and the chance for true global peace emerged with two mushroom clouds in the summer breezes over Japan.
Copyright © W. Keith Beason, 2011
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